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Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

snowday2011.com

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Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#121

Post by jmtame »

mmaunder wrote: post #79

What would be cool, and a nice courtesy gesture since HN gave you so much traffic, is if you shared actual numbers with us. Data we can use. I'd like to see: Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.

if I understand this model, he has to get a certain number of orders (say 100) before he can actually print. the price of each shirt depends on a bulk amount and if he doesn't hit that, he can't ship the shirts. for these shirts I'd suspect it costs about $10 each (silkscreen printing), plus whatever shipping and handling. maybe $3-$4 profit each shirt x 100 = $300-$400

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#122

Post by danielhfrank »

I suppose I'll be in the minority on a site run by a VC, but I'm pretty disappointed that a get-"rich"-quick story like this can outpace technical articles here - no doubt the word "profitable" in the title helped. I certainly don't think there's anything "wrong" with what you did, it's just not what I come here to read. I'd always kind of held the belief that this was a site for lots of really smart folks talking about current technical issues, but maybe I've been fooling myself a bit.

Credit where it's due though, the site appears to have been coded up pretty well

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#123

Post by slimier »

guynamedloren wrote: post #35
gregpilling wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at the $2.95 shirt guys? http://www.295guys.com/ I have talked to them at some trade shows and they have very aggressive pricing if you are in the 500 unit range.

I have a printer in mind that I've worked with before, but ill definitely give those guys a look. Not in 500 range yet, but I think I just hit viral a few minute ago so it could be a possibility. Thanks for the tip.

What was your plan had this flopped and you only had a few sales by the time you had to start shipping items? could you have brought down to a per-unit basis? did you have an exit strategy if it didn't seem worth your time?

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#124

Post by checker »

rapind wrote: post #116
rmc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an complicated ethical decision. On one hand some local clothing manufacteurers are out of buisiness. On the other hand a whole pile of people have cheap, high quality clothing.

Off-topic now for sure, but IMO the investment / charity is always better spent on local businesses to produce goods rather than donating goods. Donating goods just makes us feel better about our excesses (the fact that we by new clothing based on style instead of wear / utility).

It's a complicated issue. I think the reason people donate is based on this logic:

An old t-shirt here is essentially worthless. We see somewhere that a demand exists for a worthless item (to us), so we give it to them because they are much poorer than us (rather than sell it to them). We think we save them the work for the t-shirt assuming they will be able to concentrate on something else productive rather than acquiring clothing. Everyone wins (although not necessarily the case).

In addition to making us feel better about our excesses, it makes logical sense, although the logic is based upon possibly inaccurate assumptions.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#125

Post by kmfrk »

guynamedloren wrote: post #98

For what it's worth, I just remembered two somewhat interesting points: 1) There were several copycat shirts that came out on Cafepress/Zazzle shortly after mine started gaining traction. The shirt concept itself is not completely unique as we've all seen "I SURVIVED ..." shirts before, but the copycat shirts used the same font, word placement, and everything. Am I upset? Absolutely not. Those just validate my idea.…

I think he'll mostly earn his conversions from the Facebook event, but it never hurts to spend twenty seconds to do a TinEye search and see what shows up.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#126

Post by komlenic »

guynamedloren wrote: post #102
komlenic wrote: post #55

Wow on the idea, wow on the execution, and wow on the design! Out of curiosity: Domain Name: SNOWDAY2012.COM Created Date: 03-Feb-2011 Expiry Date: 03-Feb-2012 Registrant Name: Paul Jefferiesr

Thank you for the kind words. I guess that means the years of hardwork are paying off, even if the direct time investment was a few hours. HA! I can't believe somebody registered that domain name. Too funny, it didn't even cross my mind. Snowday2011.com was my backup - I really wanted snowpocalypse.com!

The site design alone really is a superb lesson in simple effective good-looking usability. As someone else pointed out: one click ordering, brilliantly-worded concise text, good design, immediately understandable purpose and call to action. These things all instill confidence, and are no accident. Anyone who's ever tried should know how difficult it is to make something "simple"... so yes I'd say your years of hard work have paid off.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#127

Post by guynamedloren »

slimier wrote: post #123
guynamedloren wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a printer in mind that I've worked with before, but ill definitely give those guys a look. Not in 500 range yet, but I think I just hit viral a few minute ago so it could be a possibility. Thanks for the tip.

What was your plan had this flopped and you only had a few sales by the time you had to start shipping items? could you have brought down to a per-unit basis? did you have an exit strategy if it didn't seem worth your time?

Paypal has a wonderful thing called a refund button. Had things not worked out, all I would have to do is hit that a few times and I'm right back where I started, with no loss except $8 and some time.

Talk about minimizing risk, huh?

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#129

Post by guynamedloren »

LiveTheDream wrote: post #118
guynamedloren wrote: post #3

I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and my thought process: - Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage that instant-market - Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too mu…

Have you had any trouble with PayPal flagging your account yet?

Not yet - fingers crossed!

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#130

Post by jmtame »

jmtame wrote: post #121
mmaunder wrote: post #79

What would be cool, and a nice courtesy gesture since HN gave you so much traffic, is if you shared actual numbers with us. Data we can use. I'd like to see: Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.

if I understand this model, he has to get a certain number of orders (say 100) before he can actually print. the price of each shirt depends on a bulk amount and if he doesn't hit that, he can't ship the shirts. for these shirts I'd suspect it costs about $10 each (silkscreen printing), plus whatever shipping and handling. maybe $3-$4 profit each shirt x 100 = $300-$400

i just realized you do other shirts on your main site, so maybe you have a special deal arranged to do shirts. if so, that's really cool. plus i didn't realize you went to the same school as me ;)
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